Philosophy of the Performing Arts

130 performance and the classical paradigm
her actions by the anticipated eye or ear of an intended audience of those
actions. Is it plausible, however, to think that the reader serves as her own
intended audience in her sounding of the work? But perhaps Kivy can argue
that the reader’s critical assessment of her own performance in such cases is
no more problematic that the sight-reader’s critical assessment of her sound-
ing of a musical work in her head. More crucially, however, even if we allow
that the reader can “perform” the literary text, this doesn’t show that litera-
ture is a performed art. For what makes music and drama performed arts is
not merely that aficionados attend performances of plays and musical works,
but that it is only through engagement with such performances that theatri-
cal and musical works can be properly appreciated and evaluated. It is the
role that performances by practitioners of the performing arts play in the
appreciation and evaluation of works that make theater and music performed
arts. But if this is true, then descriptive facts about the phenomenology of
our reading experiences, however insightful, cannot serve as the principal
argument for viewing the reading of fictional literature as a performing art
analogous to musical performance. What needs to be shown is how such
phenomenological facts bear upon the appreciation and evaluation of liter-
ary works. Only if the sort of “performance” that Kivy describes bears upon
the appreciation of a work of literary fiction in a manner analogous to the
way in which a performance (public or in the head) of a musical work bears
upon its appreciation can our ability to “perform” a literary work in the head
support the conclusion that literature is properly viewed as a performed art
and reading as the related performing art.
In certain respects, this challenge might be met. There may indeed be
a role, in the proper appreciation of at least some literary fictions, for the
reader’s expressive sounding in the head of the utterances of characters in
the novel, for this may bear upon what is true in the story concerning these
characters. But, to be accorded such a role, the sounding must contribute
to understanding and appreciation of the fiction over and above the contri-
bution made thereto by the interpretation of the characters upon which the
expressive sounding is itself based. It must be in virtue of how the utterances
sound when voiced in the head that some appreciation-relevant fact about
the literary work is made manifest to the receiver. Clearly there are cases
where this is so. For example, the humorous dimensions of certain comic
characters depend in this way on how their utterances would sound.^20 But in
general it is unclear that this condition on artistic relevance will be satisfied.
And, if we turn to the narrative elements in storytelling, it is much more
difficult to see how expressive sounding plays a part in the appreciation of
the work, save where the sound of the words itself contributes to the work’s
appreciable properties – where literature performs certain more standardly
poetic functions in virtue of the sounds of the text.